The Young, the Dems, and the AIPAC

No one would expect the College Democrats of America (CDA) to be anything less than democratic, right? Well the chaos last week at the annual CDA conference has us worried. CDA President Natasha McKenzie came under serious fire over the weekend – and was impeached shortly thereafter – when several members of the national board penned a letter demanding her resignation for “intimidation, corruption, chaos, and other concerns” over the course of the conference. McKenzie stands accused of threatening a candidate to withdraw, and certifying election results even though most of the delegates abstained because of the drama. Democracy ain’t so pretty after all, huh? McKenzie also decided to present AIPAC an award at the conference (which by the way apparently wasn’t on the schedule or publicized), and has also come under fire for the audacity of awarding a lobbying group that is spending MILLIONS of dollars to defeat President Obama’s Iran deal. It does seems a rather inopportune time to award a group that has the Democratic Party’s leader in its cross hairs. Predictably, the story about the young peoples' arm of the Democratic Party not supporting their Democratic President, was used by some to speculate that the Democratic Party is becoming increasingly hostile to Israel. This is obviously complete nonsense if you do a quick whip count on Congressional votes, a quick standing ovation count on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, or a quick dollar count on military aid the Democratic President has given to Israel over his term.